Agriculture in a Hot World

Against the background of a brief history of global agricultural production of the last 12.000 years with a focus on the last 100 years, illustrates the challenges today’s food system is confronted with given an unfortunate but likely scenario of a +3° temperature increase. Our review of the available evidence paints a quite dreadful picture. A moderate gain in the area suitable for agriculture is confronted with substantial yield losses through strains on crop physiology, multitrophic interactions, and more frequent extreme events. Self-amplifying feedbacks are unresolved and might lead to further unexpected losses. Consequently, all well-known pathways to eradicating global hunger while bending the curve of biodiversity loss need to be implemented today: Transitioning to less energy-rich diets, closing yield gaps through agroecological principles, adopting modern breeding technologies to foster stress resilience and yields, minimizing harvest losses and food waste and a trade system that serves to distribute food fairly and to compensate for possible climate-related yield losses, while locally adapted cultivation methods should be developed further and not be replaced. Efficiency gains in agriculture only, albeit indispensable, will not be enough to achieve food security under severe climate change.